Asking for Minutes: The Movement of an Interactional Practice Across Preschool and Home Contexts

• In Event: Roundtable Session 79
  In Roundtable Session: Cross-Context Studies of Learners’ Experiences of and in Activity

Abstract

This paper reports on an ethnographic study examining children’s learning and interaction in two primary contexts of their everyday lives: home and preschool. We compare these settings as environments for learning and investigate parents’, teachers’ and children’s methods for bridging across these contexts. We focus here on an interactional practice used for resolving disputes among children at one preschool we studied. When two children are vying for an object, the one who does not currently have possession is encouraged to “ask [the other child] for minutes.” The child in possession then suggests a number of minutes for which s/he will continue to play with the object before handing it over. We found that several families whose children attend the preschool adopted this practice for use at home. We consider (1) how this practice is employed in preschool and home settings, (2) the particular opportunities for learning it affords in each setting, and (3) the factors that may facilitate its movement across the boundary between preschool and home.

Data for this study consist of video-recordings of children’s activities at preschool and home, supplemented by interviews of parents and teachers. We recorded activities in seven rooms at three early childhood centers, and also recorded out-of-school activities of ten of these children (ages 2-5 years). Approximately 500 hours of video were recorded, logged, and tagged for phenomena of interest. Selected segments were then transcribed and analyzed, using methods of video-based interaction analysis (Stevens & Hall, 1998; Jordan & Henderson, 1995).

This paper draws from parent interviews and video-recordings of the preschool and home activities of one of our focal children, Marie (age 2;11). We focus on three instances of “asking for minutes” occurring within a 3-week timespan. We investigate this practice in terms of the learning opportunities it affords and find that it is not just a device for keeping peace or socializing children to resolve disputes, but it also provides an occasion for the exercise and development of mathematical skills. However, we also find a key difference in the details of how this practice is implemented in Marie’s home and preschool: specifically, whether negotiation is permitted. This difference has implications for the kinds of math that are involved.

In this example, a practice crosses the divide and becomes a coherent part of a child’s experience that she can build on across contexts. We describe how several factors come together allowing this to occur. But even in this seemingly ideal set of circumstances, the potential for home/school mismatch remains. In this case, the practice becomes transformed as it travels across contexts. This analysis has implications for programs that hope to influence parents’ interactions with children at home. It suggests conditions that make this more likely to happen, but also suggests a complexity to be aware of: practices may be adapted according to cultural, material and social features of the contexts in which they are employed, which can change the ways in which they work as devices for communication and opportunities for learning.

Authors

• Siri Mehus, University of Washington

• Reed Stevens, Northwestern University